Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Rice to Go on Offense Over Secret Prisons

To provoke discussion...

Originally Posted by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post

Administration officials previously have said the United States has abided by U.S. laws and complied with "international obligations." The problem for the administration has been that many European officials have suggested the secret prisons violated European laws -- and intelligence officials agree with that, saying that is one reason the operations have been kept secret.

To rebut that concern, Rice will introduce a new concept, also suggested by McCormack, that the United States "respects the sovereignty" of its allies. Administration officials said this language is code for saying that these intelligence operations took place with the full knowledge of relevant European government or intelligence officials -- without actually confirming specific intelligence programs.

Trust your government. We are creating this gulag system for your own good. International law isn't that important, anyway...

She's running for president of the Confederacy in 2008.

Originally Posted by Mr. John Walsh

Bush is telling a lie, of course,
when he says the Dems had "the same intelligence" as
he had. But it contains a kernel of truth, which must be scaring
the hell out of the Dems as they feel pressure to abandon the
war. (Bush and Cheney finally say something with an element
of truth!!!) The kernel is that enough Democrats had enough
knowledge to know that we were being lied into war in October,
2002. And except for a courageous 21 Senators, along with 2
Republicans, they went along for the ride - with their careers
in mind. So in attempting to excuse his colleagues, Graham's
op-ed leaves his fellow members of the Select Intelligence Committee
hanging out to dry. (It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of
folks. And just perhaps, that very thought occurred to Graham
as he penned his piece. ) And he raises suspicions about the
rest of the Senate, with the exception of the 23. (And of course
how is he to explain the votes of the 23; are they to be labeled
traitors to save the reputations of Hillary, Kerry et al? That
is a tough sell.)


Where does that leave us?
The crisis that is the war in Iraq has become a crisis of
Democracy. Right now it is crystal clear that there is no true
opposition party, although there are minor elements (very
minor ones) among the Left in the Democratic party and the Libertarians
in the Republican party. These could constitute a genuine antiwar
opposition. Until that happens, the war will go one, the neocons
may drive us into further wars and our democracy will be further
imperiled.

The Lies of Jonathan Edwards

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Damn you, George W. Bush. :evil:

Kevin, he wouldn't be able to do it if most of your neighbors weren't okay with him doing it. When was the last General Strike in Vancouver?

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Damn you, George W. Bush. :evil:

Kevin, he wouldn't be able to do it if most of your neighbors weren't okay with him doing it. When was the last General Strike in Vancouver?

ALong with their poitcal represntative, the public has taken the Kool-Aid to heart as well as stomach. We have no opposition now. As a died in the wool contrarian, nothing irritates or scares me quite so much as universally held truths. They are never confronted, because who will do the confronting?

When was the last time anyone actively opposed the idea that we, as a nation, need to subsidize business so they will continue to grow? Or even more to the point, that these subsidies are necessary for us to be employed? It's now stated as being axiomatic - so obvious it neither needs nor submits to proof. :evil:

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Damn you, George W. Bush. :evil:

Kevin, he wouldn't be able to do it if most of your neighbors weren't okay with him doing it. When was the last General Strike in Vancouver?

ALong with their poitcal represntative, the public has taken the Kool-Aid to heart as well as stomach. We have no opposition now. As a died in the wool contrarian, nothing irritates or scares me quite so much as universally held truths. They are never confronted, because who will do the confronting?

When was the last time anyone actively opposed the idea that we, as a nation, need to subsidize business so they will continue to grow? Or even more to the point, that these subsidies are necessary for us to be employed? It's now stated as being axiomatic - so obvious it neither needs nor submits to proof. :evil:

I don't know that I've ever posted an optimistic thought in this forum, but the tide does seem to be turning, however slowly, and achingly. The elites of both parties appear to be losing their moral authority in the country. At the moment, the broad center of the electorate, who has fallen for Republican demagogy and Democratic opportunism consistently for the last generation, isn't looking especially wise now either. The national economy, with its gas guzzling suburbs, looks like a vast and teetering Ponzi scheme. The progressives and paleocons who have been saying for years if not decades that America's "new economy" was hollow to its core, and that abandoning traditional industries like manufacturing while piling on lavish debt was a mistake are looking increasingly prophetic. Iraq is slouching toward ethnic cleansing and civil war, and the progressives and paleos who warned about these things ahead of time look a whole lot better than those on the other side of the aisle. George Bush wants to "stay the course." Hillary Clinton wants to ban "intimidating" flag burning, and sales of violent video games to minors. It's the political elites who haven't gotten the memo.

America should have learned its lesson with "New Coke." New or neo-anything, including neoliberals and neoconservatives, rarely bring good into the world.

Not to belabor the Iraq/Yugoslavia analogy but this quote struck me today...

Originally Posted by Sally Buzbee

"He said the army - also dominated by Shiites - is conducting raids against villages and towns in Sunni and mixed areas of Iraq, rather than targeting specific insurgents - a tactic he said reminded many Sunnis of Saddam Hussein-era raids."

Tito, who was half-Croat, half-Slovenian ruled a Yugoslavia where Serbians were the largest ethnic group. Saddam Hussein - a Sunni - ruled an Iraq where Shiites were/are the largest religious group. As Yugoslavia began to unravel the Serbs - who Tito considered "the cancer in the hills" (Tito had murdered more than 200,000 people [most of them Serbs] during the second world war, not to mention inviting into Kosovo [a traditionally Serbian territory] more than a million ethnic Albanians to displace the Serbian majority, and repeatedly lying to the Serbs) - were in many ways guilty of the worst ethnic cleansing and retribution, and it sure looks as though some Shiites (who were similiarly mistreated under Hussein) want to follow in their path.

It is not so difficult to imagine a scenario where Shiite on Sunni violence outpaces indiscriminate and targeted killings of Shiites by Sunni insurgents. Liberal hawk Thomas Friedman suggested in an op-ed not so long ago that if the Sunnis do not accept "democracy" (my quotes) in Iraq we should arm the Shiites and leave the country. Well, as a matter of fact we are arming the Shiites. They are the Iraqi army today. They have the keys to Saddam's helicopters and heavy munitions depots, as well as millions in new light arms provided by America. He with the bigger guns, and the bigger numbers, and the bigger grudges, can do considerable damage, especially with the backing of the world's last remaining superpower.

The biggest difference perhaps between Iraq and Yugoslavia (apart of course from culture, history, and everything else) is that it was the Serbian plurality who wanted to see the survival of the country (or at least a Serbian nation-state that included all the areas of the former Yugoslavia with Serbian populations), and the ethnic and religious minorities who wanted to see a loose confederation of republics. In Iraq, it is the Sunni minority who wants to preserve a strong central government, while the Shiite plurality appears to prefer a loose federation and the Kurds want to secede altogether. But these differences may not be enough to ensure that widespread ethnic cleansing doesn't take place, and that Iraq can even survive as a loose federation.

On the bright side, the dissolution of the country could - under the right leadership - actually be the biggest boon to the Sunnis. They would lose their oil wealth (the bulk of which is in the north and south), but oil and mineral wealth has tended to be more of a curse than a blessing in many places. Oil-rich countries have tended to be less free, less developed, and more corrupt than their resource-poor counterparts. In this outcome, if they managed to put aside their sense of grievance, and avoid becoming a theocracy or some other kind of authoritarian republic, the lack of resources could compel them to get their act together, tapping reserves of their own ingenuity (as successful resource-poor states have done), and cleaning up their government and economy to reach out for foreign aid and investment.

in which the Möbius might hide.

Originally Posted by Mr. David Lightman in the Hartford [i

Courant[/i]]The Connecticut Democrat's (Sen. Joe Lieberman) "Bipartisan Victory in Iraq Administrative Group," designed to take some of the political edge off the war debate.

BVIIAG :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Imus says we should just let Sadaam have the country back. He would take care of eliminating the terrorists.

Schumer says let them break up into three separate countries.

Originally Posted by takascar2

Imus says we should just let Sadaam have the country back. He would take care of eliminating the terrorists.

Schumer says let them break up into three separate countries.

I'll wager that Shumer gets his wish, and Imus gets to talk about it for as long as he wants.

A National Journal piece presents an exhaustive case that Iraq has already descended into civil war.

Originally Posted by Paul Starobin

By just about every meaningful standard that can be applied -- the reference points of history, the research criteria of political science, the contemporaneous reporting of on-the-ground observers, the grim roll of civilian and combatant casualties -- Iraq is now well into the bloody sequence of civil war. Dispense with the tentative locution "on the verge of." An active, if not full-boil, civil war is already a reality. The principal combatants are drawn from the Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab communities, which together comprise about three-quarters of the Iraqi population of 26 million. In this picture, U.S.-led coalition forces tend to be viewed by "rejectionist" Sunni Arabs as protectors of the Shiites, who dominate the new, U.S.-backed, Iraqi government and who operate militias with close ties to the new Iraqi regime.

This is what I was trying to say above: successful liberal democracies tend to grow out of successful nation states, and the process of nation building and national consolidation was never complete in Iraq. As the author points out we disrupted it.

Originally Posted by Paul Starobin

"At the root of the civil war, Lang says, are Sunni Arabs contesting for control of an Iraq in which Shiite Arabs feel newly empowered. Like Bosnia under the Austro-Hapsburg Empire, Lang says, pre-invasion Baathist Iraq was a kind of "ecumenical melting pot." And even though Sunnis were largely in control, secular Shiites occupied important posts in institutions like the police force, the civil service, the universities, and the army. It was "a pressure-cooker approach to forming national identity," Lang says, and "we interrupted this process of amalgamation.... By taking the lid off this pressure cooker, we have allowed these various elements to resolve themselves into their basic form." Some 20 cities and towns around Baghdad, once mixed, are segregating along Shiite and Sunni lines, according to a recent New York Times count."

Next time can we elect someone with at least the slimmest understanding of the post-cold war world?

A new book, Electing To Fight, by two political scientists—Edward Mansfield of the University of Pennsylvania and Jack Snyder of Columbia—reinforces this pessimism. The book argues that, while mature democracies do tend to be more peaceful and almost never go to war with one another, emerging democracies tend to be more violent and aggressive than any other type of regime—and are more likely to erupt in civil war or revert to autocratic rule.

Iraq's election result: a divided nation

The money quotes...

Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn

"Iraq is disintegrating. The first results from the parliamentary election last week show the country is dividing between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish regions.

Religious fundamentalists now have the upper hand. The secular and nationalist candidate backed by the US and Britain was humiliatingly defeated.

The Shia religious coalition has won a total victory in Baghdad and the south of Iraq. The Sunni Arab parties who openly or covertly support armed resistance to the US are likely to win large majorities in Sunni provinces. The Kurds have already achieved quasi-independence and their voting reflected that.

The election marks the final shipwreck of American and British hopes of establishing a pro-Western secular democracy in a united Iraq."

Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn

"The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zilmay Khalilzad, sounded almost despairing yesterday as he reviewed the results of the election. "It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian identities," he said. "But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian co-operation."

Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn

"The election also means a decisive switch from a secular Iraq to a country in which, outside Kurdistan, religious law will be paramount. Mr Allawi, who ran a well-financed campaign, was the main secular hope but that did not translate into votes. The other main non-religious candidate, Ahmed Chalabi, won less than 1 per cent of the vote in Baghdad and will be lucky to win a single seat in the new 275-member Council of Representatives.

"People underestimate how religious Iraq has become," said one Iraqi observer. "Iran is really a secular society with a religious leadership, but Iraq will be a religious society with a religious leadership." Already most girls leaving schools in Baghdad wear headscarves. Women's rights in cases of divorce and inheritance are being eroded."

Originally Posted by Patrick Cockburn

"The elections are also unlikely to see a diminution in armed resistance to the US by the Sunni community. Insurgent groups have made clear that they see winning seats in parliament as the opening of another front.

The break-up of Iraq has been brought closer by the election. The great majority of people who went to the polls voted as Shia, Sunni or Kurds - and not as Iraqis. The forces pulling Iraq apart are stronger than those holding it together. The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral."

Originally Posted by Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan

However Iraq ends, the era that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall has reached its close. That place in the sun the Greatest Generation won for us, and the Cold War generation kept for us, the baby boomer generation appears to have lost. And perhaps forever.

How Stands the Empire?

Originally Posted by PJB

...Apparently, few of our future leaders wish to risk their lives in the "global democratic revolution."

...
When it comes to empire, we are – in a phrase Bush used to hear often growing up in West Texas – "all hat {bicorne} and no cattle."

:arrow: :arrow: :arrow:


VKS

Thank you, Pat (and Mr. Saari). I like "Cold War" generation a helluva a lot better than "Silent" (which doesn't describe those of us born after 1935 very well at all). Does anybody else?

Pax,

Dave Krein '42

Originally Posted by David Krein

Thank you, Pat (and Mr. Saari). I like "Cold War" generation a helluva a lot better than "Silent" (which doesn't describe those of us born after 1935 very well at all). Does anybody else?

I'm not thrilled by either name, but I'd suggest that we don't go out of our way to insert alternate naming conventions into a system that is already hard enough for outsiders to follow. The author's habit of changing nomenclature from book to book is bad enough without the fans doing the same.

Many Iraqi soldiers see a civil war on the horizon

Originally Posted by Tom Lasseter

"KIRKUK, Iraq - Passions run deep for the Arab and Kurdish soldiers who wear the Iraqi army uniform.

Kirkuk lies just a few miles from one of the nation's largest oil fields, worth billions of dollars. Arabs figure that the city's oil wealth should belong to Iraq, while ethnic Kurds see it as part of a future nation of Kurdistan.

"If the Kurds want to separate from Iraq it's OK, as long as they keep their present boundaries," said Sgt. Hazim Aziz, an Arab soldier who was stubbing out a cigarette in a barracks room. "But there can be no conversation about them taking Kirkuk. ... If it becomes a matter of fighting, then we will join any force that fights to keep Kirkuk. We will die to keep it."

Kurdish soldiers in the room seethed at the words.

"These soldiers do not know anything about Kirkuk," Capt. Ismail Mahmoud, a former member of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, said as he got up angrily and walked out of the room. "There is no other choice. If Kirkuk does not become part of Kurdistan peacefully we will fight for 100 years to take it."

Five days spent interviewing Iraqi army soldiers in northern Iraq - who are overwhelmingly Kurdish - made clear that many soldiers think that a civil war is coming.

"I see Iraq gradually becoming three regions that will one day become independent," said Jafar Mustafir, a close adviser to Iraq's Kurdish interim president, Jalal Talabani, and the deputy head of Peshmerga for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two major Kurdish parties. "I see us moving toward the end of Iraq."

Achieving independence is a matter of life and death for Mahmoud, as with most other Kurdish soldiers interviewed."

Kurds prepare for civil war in Iraq

Originally Posted by Tom Lasseter

"KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga -- the Kurdish militia -- and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

"It doesn't matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own battalion," said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. "Kirkuk will be ours."

The Kurds have readied their troops not only because they've long yearned to establish an independent state but also because their leaders expect Iraq to disintegrate, senior leaders in the Peshmerga -- literally, "those who face death" -- told Knight Ridder. The Kurds are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, and are ethnically distinct from Arabs."

Originally Posted by Linus

Not to belabor the Iraq/Yugoslavia analogy but this quote struck me today...

Originally Posted by Sally Buzbee

"He said the army - also dominated by Shiites - is conducting raids against villages and towns in Sunni and mixed areas of Iraq, rather than targeting specific insurgents - a tactic he said reminded many Sunnis of Saddam Hussein-era raids."

Tito, who was half-Croat, half-Slovenian ruled a Yugoslavia where Serbians were the largest ethnic group. Saddam Hussein - a Sunni - ruled an Iraq where Shiites were/are the largest religious group. As Yugoslavia began to unravel the Serbs - who Tito considered "the cancer in the hills" (Tito had murdered more than 200,000 people [most of them Serbs] during the second world war, not to mention inviting into Kosovo [a traditionally Serbian territory] more than a million ethnic Albanians to displace the Serbian majority, and repeatedly lying to the Serbs) - were in many ways guilty of the worst ethnic cleansing and retribution, and it sure looks as though some Shiites (who were similiarly mistreated under Hussein) want to follow in their path.

It is not so difficult to imagine a scenario where Shiite on Sunni violence outpaces indiscriminate and targeted killings of Shiites by Sunni insurgents. Liberal hawk Thomas Friedman suggested in an op-ed not so long ago that if the Sunnis do not accept "democracy" (my quotes) in Iraq we should arm the Shiites and leave the country. Well, as a matter of fact we are arming the Shiites. They are the Iraqi army today. They have the keys to Saddam's helicopters and heavy munitions depots, as well as millions in new light arms provided by America. He with the bigger guns, and the bigger numbers, and the bigger grudges, can do considerable damage, especially with the backing of the world's last remaining superpower.

The biggest difference perhaps between Iraq and Yugoslavia (apart of course from culture, history, and everything else) is that it was the Serbian plurality who wanted to see the survival of the country (or at least a Serbian nation-state that included all the areas of the former Yugoslavia with Serbian populations), and the ethnic and religious minorities who wanted to see a loose confederation of republics. In Iraq, it is the Sunni minority who wants to preserve a strong central government, while the Shiite plurality appears to prefer a loose federation and the Kurds want to secede altogether. But these differences may not be enough to ensure that widespread ethnic cleansing doesn't take place, and that Iraq can even survive as a loose federation.

On the bright side, the dissolution of the country could - under the right leadership - actually be the biggest boon to the Sunnis. They would lose their oil wealth (the bulk of which is in the north and south), but oil and mineral wealth has tended to be more of a curse than a blessing in many places. Oil-rich countries have tended to be less free, less developed, and more corrupt than their resource-poor counterparts. In this outcome, if they managed to put aside their sense of grievance, and avoid becoming a theocracy or some other kind of authoritarian republic, the lack of resources could compel them to get their act together, tapping reserves of their own ingenuity (as successful resource-poor states have done), and cleaning up their government and economy to reach out for foreign aid and investment.

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

What scares me is: what will the response be from the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated countries? Even if the rulers don't act - a BIG if - the number of non-Iraqis flooding into the country to fight the infidel Shia could make the current foriegn insurgent stream look like a little-old-lady-bus-tour.

Would Condi be able to keep King Abdullah in check? What would a new king ,still establishing relationship with the wahhabi clerical elite, do in this situation?

Originally Posted by scott 63

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

What scares me is: what will the response be from the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated countries? Even if the rulers don't act - a BIG if - the number of non-Iraqis flooding into the country to fight the infidel Shia could make the current foriegn insurgent stream look like a little-old-lady-bus-tour.

Would Condi be able to keep King Abdullah in check? What would a new king ,still establishing relationship with the wahhabi clerical elite, do in this situation?

Not sure. My belief is that most of the Muslim world is in an early 3T right now (following on the heels of the great Islamic Resurgence that started c. 1978). Now is the time, militarily, for lots of enthusiasm, but not much large-scale follow-through. However, that does leave room for a lot of chaos!

Originally Posted by scott 63

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

What scares me is: what will the response be from the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated countries? Even if the rulers don't act - a BIG if - the number of non-Iraqis flooding into the country to fight the infidel Shia could make the current foreign insurgent stream look like a little-old-lady-bus-tour.

And if a Sunni insurgent stream develops, would Iran sit idle? If the Sunnis started openly sending insurgents into Shiite lands, and with insurgents having the advantage against the establishment in that sort of conflict, does anyone think the Suni homelands would stay safe and secure?

Right now, the presence of an superpower makes it sort of OK to send insurgents in to harass the superpower. This is an established precedent, set in Nazi occupied France, Vietnam, Soviet occupied Afghanistan and elsewhere. If the local Middle Eastern governments start thinking it is OK to use insurgent tactics against one another to push religious and ethnic agendas, this would be another can of worms. This would be especially true if the Shia adapt the Sunni principle of targeting oil distribution infrastructure.

On the other hand, we have the proverb involving glass houses and stones. Many of the local kingdoms and states are sitting on their own powder kegs. Most area governments are considered corrupt. Iran is badly divided between secular and religious factions. The various royals have to know their time is limited. While inflaming ethnic strife by encouraging the flow of insurgents is possible, the various establishments might also agree on a joint pro establishment policy. The local powers have been highly reluctant to send their own troops into Iraq while the Great Satan aslo has troops present, but after the Great Satan leaves, that could change.

I shouldn't be surprised if Iraq does invite the US to leave in the not too too distant future. I would expect the Arab League to make a settlement proposal shortly after, with OPEC in the wings should the West not like said proposal. Just a guess.

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Linus

Not to belabor the Iraq/Yugoslavia analogy but this quote struck me today...

Originally Posted by Sally Buzbee

"He said the army - also dominated by Shiites - is conducting raids against villages and towns in Sunni and mixed areas of Iraq, rather than targeting specific insurgents - a tactic he said reminded many Sunnis of Saddam Hussein-era raids."

Tito, who was half-Croat, half-Slovenian ruled a Yugoslavia where Serbians were the largest ethnic group. Saddam Hussein - a Sunni - ruled an Iraq where Shiites were/are the largest religious group. As Yugoslavia began to unravel the Serbs - who Tito considered "the cancer in the hills" (Tito had murdered more than 200,000 people [most of them Serbs] during the second world war, not to mention inviting into Kosovo [a traditionally Serbian territory] more than a million ethnic Albanians to displace the Serbian majority, and repeatedly lying to the Serbs) - were in many ways guilty of the worst ethnic cleansing and retribution, and it sure looks as though some Shiites (who were similiarly mistreated under Hussein) want to follow in their path.

It is not so difficult to imagine a scenario where Shiite on Sunni violence outpaces indiscriminate and targeted killings of Shiites by Sunni insurgents. Liberal hawk Thomas Friedman suggested in an op-ed not so long ago that if the Sunnis do not accept "democracy" (my quotes) in Iraq we should arm the Shiites and leave the country. Well, as a matter of fact we are arming the Shiites. They are the Iraqi army today. They have the keys to Saddam's helicopters and heavy munitions depots, as well as millions in new light arms provided by America. He with the bigger guns, and the bigger numbers, and the bigger grudges, can do considerable damage, especially with the backing of the world's last remaining superpower.

The biggest difference perhaps between Iraq and Yugoslavia (apart of course from culture, history, and everything else) is that it was the Serbian plurality who wanted to see the survival of the country (or at least a Serbian nation-state that included all the areas of the former Yugoslavia with Serbian populations), and the ethnic and religious minorities who wanted to see a loose confederation of republics. In Iraq, it is the Sunni minority who wants to preserve a strong central government, while the Shiite plurality appears to prefer a loose federation and the Kurds want to secede altogether. But these differences may not be enough to ensure that widespread ethnic cleansing doesn't take place, and that Iraq can even survive as a loose federation.

On the bright side, the dissolution of the country could - under the right leadership - actually be the biggest boon to the Sunnis. They would lose their oil wealth (the bulk of which is in the north and south), but oil and mineral wealth has tended to be more of a curse than a blessing in many places. Oil-rich countries have tended to be less free, less developed, and more corrupt than their resource-poor counterparts. In this outcome, if they managed to put aside their sense of grievance, and avoid becoming a theocracy or some other kind of authoritarian republic, the lack of resources could compel them to get their act together, tapping reserves of their own ingenuity (as successful resource-poor states have done), and cleaning up their government and economy to reach out for foreign aid and investment.

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

Yeah, right after the Arab Street rises. Remember the doomsday predictions from 2 and 3 years ago?

It could happen, but it's far from a sure thing, it's not even the most likely thing.

Of the Mexican-American war...

Originally Posted by Rep. Abraham Lincoln (W-IL)

"If the prossecution of the war has, in expenses, already equalled the better half of the country, how long it's future prosecution, will be in equalling, the less valuable half, is not a speculative, but a practical question, pressing closely upon us. And yet it is a question which the President seems to never have thought of. As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prossecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemies country; and, after apparently, talking himself tired, on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that "with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace[.]" Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Iraqi Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us, that "this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace." But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of "more vigorous prossecution.["] All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond it's power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.
* *
Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At it's beginning, Genl. Shinseki Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes--every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do,--after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us, that, as to the end, he himself, has, even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show, there is not something about his conscious, more painful than all his mental perplexity!"

Originally Posted by HopefulCynic68

Originally Posted by Peter Gibbons

Originally Posted by Linus

Not to belabor the Iraq/Yugoslavia analogy but this quote struck me today...

Originally Posted by Sally Buzbee

"He said the army - also dominated by Shiites - is conducting raids against villages and towns in Sunni and mixed areas of Iraq, rather than targeting specific insurgents - a tactic he said reminded many Sunnis of Saddam Hussein-era raids."

Tito, who was half-Croat, half-Slovenian ruled a Yugoslavia where Serbians were the largest ethnic group. Saddam Hussein - a Sunni - ruled an Iraq where Shiites were/are the largest religious group. As Yugoslavia began to unravel the Serbs - who Tito considered "the cancer in the hills" (Tito had murdered more than 200,000 people [most of them Serbs] during the second world war, not to mention inviting into Kosovo [a traditionally Serbian territory] more than a million ethnic Albanians to displace the Serbian majority, and repeatedly lying to the Serbs) - were in many ways guilty of the worst ethnic cleansing and retribution, and it sure looks as though some Shiites (who were similiarly mistreated under Hussein) want to follow in their path.

It is not so difficult to imagine a scenario where Shiite on Sunni violence outpaces indiscriminate and targeted killings of Shiites by Sunni insurgents. Liberal hawk Thomas Friedman suggested in an op-ed not so long ago that if the Sunnis do not accept "democracy" (my quotes) in Iraq we should arm the Shiites and leave the country. Well, as a matter of fact we are arming the Shiites. They are the Iraqi army today. They have the keys to Saddam's helicopters and heavy munitions depots, as well as millions in new light arms provided by America. He with the bigger guns, and the bigger numbers, and the bigger grudges, can do considerable damage, especially with the backing of the world's last remaining superpower.

The biggest difference perhaps between Iraq and Yugoslavia (apart of course from culture, history, and everything else) is that it was the Serbian plurality who wanted to see the survival of the country (or at least a Serbian nation-state that included all the areas of the former Yugoslavia with Serbian populations), and the ethnic and religious minorities who wanted to see a loose confederation of republics. In Iraq, it is the Sunni minority who wants to preserve a strong central government, while the Shiite plurality appears to prefer a loose federation and the Kurds want to secede altogether. But these differences may not be enough to ensure that widespread ethnic cleansing doesn't take place, and that Iraq can even survive as a loose federation.

On the bright side, the dissolution of the country could - under the right leadership - actually be the biggest boon to the Sunnis. They would lose their oil wealth (the bulk of which is in the north and south), but oil and mineral wealth has tended to be more of a curse than a blessing in many places. Oil-rich countries have tended to be less free, less developed, and more corrupt than their resource-poor counterparts. In this outcome, if they managed to put aside their sense of grievance, and avoid becoming a theocracy or some other kind of authoritarian republic, the lack of resources could compel them to get their act together, tapping reserves of their own ingenuity (as successful resource-poor states have done), and cleaning up their government and economy to reach out for foreign aid and investment.

I think your analysis is spot on. The slaughter of the Iraqi Sunnis is coming, and the blood will be on Dubya's hands.

Yeah, right after the Arab Street rises. Remember the doomsday predictions from 2 and 3 years ago?

It could happen, but it's far from a sure thing, it's not even the most likely thing.

I remember predictions. We would find WMDs in Iraq. The war would be a cakewalk. They would greet us with flowers and hummus. The dominos would fall throughout the region.

I don't make predictions. I make suggestions.

Originally Posted by An American

"I am an American currently working in Baghdad for a news organization. I’ve been here numerous times over the past 15 years.

The current security situation here has gotten much worse since the elections. We had a security briefing yesterday right after a fellow journalist was abducted. Besides the usual reminders to keep a low profile and going over our own unique security measures and procedures as to what to do in any given scenario we were told that there’s a high probability of all out civil war.

Iraq has been in a low level civil war since the end of 2003 that has been increasing in intensity ever since, but now our security team is telling us that should all-out war break out most, if not all of us, may have to be evacuated to safety in a nearby country. Instead of the scores of Iraqis dying each day as do now, thousands a day could perish. Most Sunnis have given up hope of getting adequate representation in the new Iraqi government and radical elements in the Shiite parties want to exact revenge on the Sunni for supporting Saddam over the years. Shiite death squads roam the city at night (in police and army uniform no less) dragging all the male members of a Sunni family out into the street and executing them in front of their women folk. Sunni insurgents (not in uniform) do the same to Shiite families in areas claimed as theirs.

The Sunni insurgents, it seems, are now determined to bring the new government to its knees by cutting off fuel supplies to Baghdad. The city’s supply of gasoline nearly dried up last week and local authorities literally shut the city down by banning all privately owned vehicles from the streets. They claimed it was to help hunt down the kidnappers of the Interior Minister’s sister but the real reason seems to be to reduce the demand for gas until supplies could be replenished. Electricity in most Baghdad neighborhoods has now been further reduced to as low as 1 hour per day. The black market rate for fuel for generators has doubled again and in many areas even that has run out. At this rate the city will go dark by the end of the month. Iraqi troops are reluctant to escort fuel trucks into Baghdad and American troops have their hands full escorting their own convoys.

Most US casualties are a result of trying to protect US military supplies. You can forget about the US military escorting civilian fuel convoys. So it all comes down to the Iraq army’s ability to get fuel into Baghdad and I don’t have much confidence they will succeed."

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